They're such angels when they're sleeping.
Loodle is fine, although she does have an ear infection. Doctor surprised me and wrote a prescription for antibiotics but told me not to fill it yet. By this age, she should hopefully get over the infection without the medication. If not, I've got the scrip as a backup.
Doc also said there was no reason not to go to the water park since it's not swimmer's ear, just a regular middle ear infection. Loodle just needed to avoid diving to excessively deep levels. Noted. No cliff diving for the 5-year-old.
The park is near out house, at the edge of the lake. It's small, with just 4 slides, a lazy lagoon, a baby swimming area, beach and giant trampoline in the water on the lake. This is exactly my speed.
I've got a healthy fear of water. What I mean by that is I'm AFRAID OF WATER. The ocean scares me, though I grew up on the California coast and spent every weekend in the summer swimming in the waves. I panic in the pool if someone accidentally dunks me. Standing water on the side of the road kind of freaks me out. I wig out when the toilet overflows. The unexpected glub glub of our water cooler sets me on edge. Not really on that last one. But kind of.
So me taking two girls, albeit girls who are pretty good swimmers, to the water park by myself was a bit of an undertaking. We started off with the water slides. Two of them were ruled out by either height requirements or declarations by Boodle that they made her stomach upset. The other two were fairly tame, but I still felt panic as I went down the first one. It was enclosed, and having no idea where I was going, while getting splashed in the face, anticipating dropping swiftly into the pool at the end, I was hyperventilating a bit, but it all worked out.
The second slide. This one was an open slide, but see, I think the engineered it poorly. As I slid down, I started going slower and slower. I almost came to a complete stop, and had to use my arms to propel myself all the way to the bottom. That's a design flaw, right? NOTHING to do with the size of my ass. How humil, as my friend W. is fond of saying.
To further my humiliation, we next tried the giant trampoline floating on the lake, which requires scaling a ladder that runs the edge of it. While wearing the mandatory life vest. Have you scaled a (moving) ladder that runs on the convex side of things, whilst wearing a soaking wet suit and life vest? To say nothing of the spare tire riding around my middle. It took me three tries, the second of which I made halfway up and then plummeted back into the lake in spectacular fashion. I was then able to flop myself up onto the trampoline like a beached whale and roll around like a jackass before jumping back into the water and vowing to NEVER DO THIS AGAIN.
After that, I chose to sit in a deck chair with my feet in the lake while the girls picked up
boulders rocks and threw them in the lake in front of me. The sun was setting, the water was warm, and I finally got to relax.
Overall it was a great day. Loodle cracked her head on her final run down the slide, so that put a damper on leaving, but no one drowned, so the day was a success in my book.
